The Art of Eating: The Life and Appetites of M.F.K. Fisher is a feature documentary about the exciting life and lasting impact of the intrepid mid-century California food writer M.F.K. Fisher, who elevated cooking from a domestic chore to a critical study of life itself. Described by W.H. Auden as “the best prose writer in America,” the underrecognized Fisher introduced continental sensibilities to California’s burgeoning culinary world, while she transformed the traditional background figure of a woman in the kitchen into a living, breathing subject with dazzling ideas, passionate emotions, and insatiable appetites.

To tell her story Fisher’s own words are supplemented with stories by Alice Waters (Chez Panisse), Jacques Pepin (chef and writer), writers Ruth Reichl, Annie Lamott, Jerry Di Vecchio, Michele Anna Jordan, Anna Fisher’s daughter Kennedy Friede Golden, Celia Sack (Omnivore Books) and chefs John Ash, Gayle Pirie and John Clark (Foreign Cinema), Kyle and Katina Connaughton (Single Thread), Tanya Holland (Brown Sugar Cafe),  L. John Harris (the garlic king), and Dominica Rice-Cisneros (Bombera) to name a few.

She wrote over thirty books (An Alphabet for Gourmets, How to Eat a Wolf, The Gastronomical Me, Consider the Oyster) and hundreds of articles for The New Yorker, Gourmet, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and many others.

The film covers her time in France, Hollywood, Napa, Sonoma, and some surprise destinations. Her sensual writing about food and wine becomes the film’s narration as we learn about Mary Frances’ passion for fresh food while warning about the industrialization of agriculture, frozen and fast foods; the challenges of raising two daughters as a single mother; unwittingly becoming an icon for the women’s movement; starting public wine-tastings in the Napa Valley, and co-founding the Napa Valley Wine Library. 

Director: Gregory Bezat (US 2023) 86 min.

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